Archives for March 2009

Despite the many studies and reports exposing bottled water as nothing more than tap water, one man is proving that our country might not be ready to tap out just yet: even when the water is blatantly marketed as tap water.
The Los Angeles Times recently reported on Craig Zucker, the founder of a new bottled water called Tap’d NY. As the name suggests, Tap’d NY takes as its source the same reservoirs and lakes that provide New York City with its tap water. The only real difference between the two? Price, of course, and one well marketed bottle.
A quick glance tells you this isn’t your parents’ bottled water. Rather than spell out the unnecessarily long word “Tapped,” the company has chosen to eschew needless letters in favor of a simple apostrophe. It’s a testament to the widely known fact that alternative spellings or abbreviated words just sell better.
The label also touts that “No glaciers were harmed in making this water.”
To be fair, some of the nation’s finest tap water does flow through New York City’s faucets. But that begs the question–why would anyone buy Tap’d NY if they can get the very same water in their own home? A BPA-free plastic bottle or glass decanter allows you to take this water wherever you go.
If you live in an area with off-tasting tap water, there’s a solution for that, too. You can filter the impurities from your tap water with any number of filtration systems, depending on the quality of your water. Our Brita pitcher systems, for example, are a great way to rid your water of the taste and odor of chlorine, as well as other contaminants.
The end result is water that often tastes better and is more healthy than its bottled counterpart, not to mention at a fraction of the cost. Better still, you won’t be contributing to the millions of bottles that go unrecycled every year. You know, so you don’t harm any glaciers while making your water..

Sea monkeys captivated many of us as children. We would pour them into their artificially constructed habitats and watch them float about, tiny specks that didn’t really do much of anything except hold our interest for a few minutes.
How little we knew.
It turns out sea monkeys—also known as brine shrimp or Artemia salina—could reduce heavy metals in water, according to an article from the Daily Forty-Niner, the student paper of California State University, Long Beach. Roger Acey, a chemistry professor at the school, noticed some brine shrimp living in a water solution with a high level of toxic metal. He and his team later learned that the shrimp contain a protein that binds to toxic metals in the water—such as arsenic, lead or mercury—all while allowing healthy metals and minerals to pass through.
Acey produces the protein by placing a cloned gene from the shrimp into bacteria. He and his team received patents for the gene and protein sequences, as well as for using the technology to remove metals from water.
Acey plans to use this technology in the design and production of a water faucet filter and hopes to develop a prototype device in the future.
Until then, however, you might just want to consider our line of faucet filters. They might not help you recapture your childhood love of sea monkeys, but they will be just as effective at removing toxic metals and other contaminants from your water, as well as the taste and odor of chlorine..